Content-driven commerce: tell and sell!

Among the numerous recipes for e-commerce, there is one that helps create especially delicious “dishes.”

This recipe involves blending your content with commerce on your online store. But why blend it, and how? We are going to share some answers. Hopefully, after our posts on tips for small online stores and why visitors leave a store without buying, this one will be just as interesting.

A glimpse at content-driven commerce

We are lucky to live in the time of e-commerce — it’s definitely convenient, it’s often cost-efficient, and it’s always full of options. However, there is something missing in it — the human touch and the communication of a traditional shop or marketplace, the communication that often helps close the deal.

To solve this, there emerged a popular trend which has many names: content-driven commerce, story-based commerce, storytelling commerce, content commerce or content marketing. No matter what you call it, the essence is the same.

A good, interesting and useful story behind a product drives its sales. It does so by evoking your customers’ interest, capturing their attention, building more trust around the product or the brand, showing the product’s practical usefulness, convincing the users of why it is actually better, or creating a special, inspiring atmosphere.

Your engaging content also turns your visitors into regular readers, keeping them coming back to you again and again. By the way, Google likes to pay such visits as well, so, by preparing good content, you can get ready for more guests coming from search engines.

This kind of content may include blog posts, buying guides, reviews, tips, free ebooks, editorials, tutorials, podcasts, lookbooks, product demonstration videos, inspirational or fun videos, user testimonials and much more.

The best e-commerce players have long since appreciated the power of story-based commerce, and keep making their online stores content-rich. According to the report by Forrester in 2016, 95% of companies engaged in e-commerce have taken steps to unite their content and commerce strategies. And the trend is very likely to remain popular in 2017 and beyond!

Content and commerce: blending them right

To blend content and commerce in the best way, you will need a deep understanding of your audience’s interests, as well as common usability rules. Let's take a closer look.

The story and the call-to-action cannot exist without each other. They should intertwine in the most convenient and engaging way for the user. The buy button is always nearby and easy to see when your product story is told in any form. And, vice versa, on the product page, it should be clear where to click to discover additional info about it.

Your stories can be directly related to your products, like a laptop demonstration video, or indirectly, like an article with tips for combining lipstick color with dresses if you are selling cosmetics, or the life story of a rock star if you are selling guitars. The sky's the limit for your imagination!

The most important thing is to be interesting and useful, to choose the content types that suits your audience best (short or long, visual or audio, fun or serious, etc), and to take into account the season’s trends so you come in at the right time with the right message.

Explore the possibilities that content-driven commerce has to offer! If you do not yet have a website, consider building it with the Drupal content-management framework, which seems to be a perfect blend of content management and commerce opportunities. To discuss this, you should always feel free to contact Drudesk!